20 books every UX designer should read

‍

Audio, Paperback and E-books are awesome resources to use when you want to improve your design skills.

It's no longer enough to be "just" a UX Designer. Being a multi-faceted designer has become a requirement for this industry. The popular areas of focus are User Interface Design, Accessibility, UX Research, Content Creation, UX Strategy, Voice, VR/AR and the list goes on -- just check out the State of UX in 2018 to see more on that.

Trying to tackle the task of learning about this industry can be very intimidating. How would you know which areas you would like the most without trying them all? That's where the good ole book comes in. Get an idea of which areas you would like to focus on. Even if you're not interested in certain areas, it's always good to know about those topics for future reference.

1. Hooked: How to build habit-forming products by Nir Eyal

Building addictive products is a goal for all designers. Nir Eyal goes into detail discussing the "Hook Model", a basic framework of the 4 key stages of each loop: Trigger, Action, Reward, and Investment. He teaches you how to build compelling products that keep consumers coming back for more. (Topics: Human Behavioral Science, Intrinsic motivation, and psychology)

2. Well Designed: How to use empathy to create products people love by Jon Kolko

As a designer, you must know how to articulate your design decisions to executives, product managers, and your team. Even though this book is for a Product Manager, I believe it also helps designers find ways to articulate their work to PMs. Personally, I learned how to work with my PMs a lot better once I knew what conversations to have. There are about 6 interviews from Product Leaders giving insight on their approach to building great product. This was such a worthy read. (Topics: Collaboration, Design Thinking and Ethos)

3. The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman

4. Don't Make Me Thing Revisited: A Common Sense Approach to Web and Mobile Usability by Steve Krug

5. Solving Product Design Exercises by Artiom Dashinsky

6. Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five days by Jake Knapp